Fine Art Photographs by Johnny Tang

Beautiful Failures

This picture is a little painful for me to look at. It is just so close to being a fantastic new iteration in my WO1 series but it’s not. Instead I’m adding it to my pile of beautiful failures, images that almost succeed but stop just short of the finish line.

I’ve been trying to do more WO1 images involving reflections (similar to what I did for Narcissus back in the day), and in particular, I’ve been trying to do a version of Narcissus that uses the reflections from puddles. So far however, I haven’t been lucky enough with things like weather, or finding the right location.

My main issue with this shot, is that it’s simply better without all the people in it. While that’s fine as a stand alone image, in the context of my World of One series it doesn’t fit particularly well. I made a crucial mistake during the shooting of this picture. I didn’t account for how the ripples would affect my reflections as I walked through the giant puddle during the shoot. If the water was rough to begin with this would have been fine, but instead it was calm. This made blending the other opposing reflections into the water look too artificial.

It just didn’t look right, so I decided to keep the image like this instead.

While I’ve tried multiple times to revisit this location for a reshoot, the puddle has now disappeared and I don’t know when it will be back again. I have moved on, and am now making different images for the time being. But please rest assured, I will definitely revisit these motifs when the next opportunity rises!!!

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